The Minnesota National Guard is asking for new bids for a proposed $20 million armory in Stillwater. The project will be built on a 19-acre site at Myrtle Street and Maryknoll Drive. (Submitted rendering)

Stillwater armory project up for new bids

The Minnesota National Guard is seeking new construction bids for a proposed 79,465-square-foot armory on a 19-acre site at Myrtle Street and Maryknoll Drive in Stillwater.

Initial bids for the $20 million project were opened in mid-July, but an error in the documents forced a second round of bidding, according to Stillwater city administrator Larry Hansen.

“They had one sheet that said one thing and another said something else. … There is really no substantial change, other than they corrected the initial flaw,” Hansen said.

A new 29,600-square-foot fire station that will be attached to the armory is separately bid. Fire station bids initially came in $500,000 higher than expected, but tweaks to the plans brought the cost down to within the $7.3 million budget.

Despite the glitches, the combined $27.3 million worth of construction projects is on track to start this year, Hansen said. The new armory bids are due Aug. 14, according to a bid notice.

“I would expect that as soon as the bids are in, that the armory folks will get fired up almost right away,” Hansen said.

National Guard officials weren’t available Tuesday for comment on the armory, which will provide administrative and training spaces for the 34th Military Police Company and the 1/34th Brigade Special Troops Battalion.

A joint effort of the National Guard and the city of Stillwater, the project will replace an existing armory in downtown Stillwater and will include spaces available to the public, such as a gymnasium, classrooms and kitchen.

Designed for up to 26 full-time employees and 180 people during weekend drills, the armory will house an assembly hall, classrooms, kitchen, fitness area, locker and shower rooms, offices, training space, and a maintenance garage.

A $17 million federal grant, announced in January, will cover most of the funding for the armory.

Hansen said it’s not clear what will happen to the existing armory, an aging building at 107 Chestnut St. E. in downtown Stillwater.

“We have looked at possibilities from an arts center to who knows what?” he said. “Those plans have not been brought to fruition yet.”

St. Paul- based BWBR Architects has design duties for both the armory and the fire station.

Minneapolis-based Kraus-Anderson, the construction manager for the fire station, did some value engineering to bring that project’s cost down to $7.3 million, which is within the city’s budget, Hansen said.

The slightly higher-than-expected bids for the fire station aren’t especially surprising.

After years of relatively flat bid prices, some escalation is coming back into play, according to Tom Hysell, a principal with Minneapolis-based Architectural Alliance and president of AIA Minnesota.

Hysell said the industry is assuming about 6 percent inflation in construction costs over the next 12 months.

“It’s always indicative of a good economy, so it’s hard for us to complain,” he said. “But it means that budgets set a year ago – now we have to re-evaluate what the money can actually buy for the project.”